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Creative Solutions, Awards Spark Reunion By Angela Stefano
The elm tree-shaded hillside couldn’t be full of former Spartans this past June — but our computer screens could. Faced with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic for a second year, the Lawrence Academy Alumni Advancement Team, reunion ambassadors, and class volunteers made the best of an unprecedented situation. Instead of canceling Reunion 2021, as happened in 2020, reunion-year classes from both 2020 (0’s and 5’s) and 2021 (1’s and 6’s) gathered virtually for a celebration of their graduating classes, their former teachers, and their accomplishments in the years since graduation. While the Alumni Advancement Team opted to postpone the Lawrence Academy Athletic Hall of Fame inductions for the second year, they worked with the communications team and several volunteers, in collaboration with the inductees, to create a website full of on-demand Reunion programming. Also archived there is the live Reunion programming that took place the afternoon of June 12. Opening remarks from longtime LA history teacher John Curran gave way to a slideshow narrated by former faculty member Joe Sheppard offering “a little history lesson” focused briefly on each Reunion class. “You’ve helped move the school forward,” Mr. Curran noted, “and you’ve also helped preserve a sense of community that has endured over all these years.” Head of School Dan Scheibe P’23, ‘24 echoed that sentiment during his State of the School address. “We’re indebted to generations who have built a school and built a culture before us,” he told the dozens of Lawrence Academy alumni tuning in from home, some taking advantage of the LA-specific virtual backgrounds designed just for the occasion. Together with Board of Trustees President Jason Saghir P’19, Mr. Scheibe stressed that while a global pandemic is a new experience for Lawrence, the school has weathered metaphorical storms in the past and now is again. “It’s a comfort to be in the presence of alums,” he said. “… A school that’s been around since 1793 has definitely seen its share of challenges to human vitality … We’ve experienced cultural
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tremors and turbulence before … and a need for a school to be able to reposition and reinvent itself, sometimes in the moment.” Alumni Council President Carolyn Balas-Zaleski ’84, P’17 presided over the presentation of a variety of faculty and alumni-focused awards, beginning with 2020’s Alumni Faculty Appreciation Award, given posthumously to longtime faculty member Arleigh D. “Doc” Richardson, a fixture on the LA campus from 1977 through 1991.
2020 Faculty Appreciation Award
“I had the depth and character of Arleigh (Doc) Richardson III probably a shallow puddle at the P’78; GP’06, ’11 time I came to LA as a 16-year-old,” admitted Steve Heinze ’88 during remarks in Dr. Richardson’s honor. “He certainly added to that water of my shallow puddle. Doc really is someone who has affected me and brought joy and understanding and respect for things I maybe would have not otherwise realized had I not met him.” More than 200 former Spartans from the early 1970s voted for 2021’s Alumni Faculty Appreciation Award winner, the late Vin Skinner. Mr. Skinner was only on campus for four years, but, as one nominator noted, “He saw me, and he saw every student he had. He didn’t just teach 2021 Faculty — he showed us who we were and Appreciation Award what we could achieve.” “I am still learning from this extraordinary man,” reflected Joe Donahue ’72, calling Mr. Skinner “an existentialist Socrates, always asking the questions that counted.” Skinner’s daughter Leigh — “a blonde blur,” as Joe remembered her from her time living with her father, mother, and sister on campus —
Vincent “Vin” Skinner
